Creating Proposed Landscape Trees in Minutes
One of the most important duties engineers and designers have is understanding their client’s vision for a proposed project site. For decades, engineering and architectural firms have created preliminary and final site designs with 2D engineering and architectural plans and rendering images in order to create the client’s development vision. Even then, some of the vision gets lost or is not achieved during the design phases. For the past few years, 3D design software has become increasingly more powerful and intuitive with designing tools that help bring clients visions to life.
For the past several years, InfraWorks® 360 has helped engineers and designers created rich, high-resolution 3D models. With these 3D models, the designs and client can identify design issues that could not be seen on a 2D construction set of plans. In order to create these realistic 3D models, several site features must be added such as signs, parking striping, city furniture, vehicles, clouds, pedestrians, trees, and landscaping. In this article, you will learn how to layout preliminary proposed landscape trees quickly and easily.
Importing Site Trees
Typically, when you start a preliminary site design, all you have to work with is a simple AutoCAD® drawing of the preliminary site and a few buildings elevation images. The proposed tree survey or landscaping plans will most likely not even be started. If you are lucky, you may be able to acquire as-built plans for a previous similar project from the client. Let’s assume you have the landscape plans for a similar project you are designing. You can review and analyze the landscape pattern, design, and scheme for proposed trees. Now go into your AutoCAD drawing and begin drawing small circles at the locations you think the proposed landscape trees would be, based off the other design.
In Figure 1, I created a few circles in my drawing to symbolize the location of the proposed trees. The size of the circles does not really matter. It would be easier to place them on their own layers.
Figure 1
Once you have sketched out all the proposed trees in your drawing, use the LAYISO command to isolate the trees you drew. Next, in order for the trees to import into InfraWorks 360 at
the right location, you will need to ensure that your drawing has a coordinate system assigned to it. If you are using AutoCAD® Civil 3D®, simply go into your Toolspace, Settings Tab, right
click on your drawing name, and select Editing Drawing Settings. Assign the proper coordinate system for your site (Figure 2).
Figure 2
To ensure that your drawing linework is at the right location, use the GEOMAP feature in AutoCAD or AutoCAD Civil 3D to turn on the aerials. If the proposed site linework is correct, the aerial imagery will closely align with your drawing.
Next, use the MAPEXPORT command to export the proposed trees that you created. Within the Export Location dialog box (Figure 3), ensure that you select Autodesk SDF file format. While in the Export dialog box, use the filter selection feature and select the layer that the trees are on.
Figure 3
Figure 4
In the Options tab, check Treat closed polylines as polygon.” Click OK.
Now, go back into InfraWorks 360 and access the Data Sources panel, which can be found in the Intelligent Tools / Build-Manage your Infrastructure Model / Create and Manage your model (Figure 4).
Within the Data Sources panel, select SDF as your import file format and browse to your data file. Next, since the data file is vector data, you will need to configure the data, so double click on the file. Within the Data Source Configuration dialog box under Type, select Trees (Figure 5). At the bottom under Styles select the Edit button and select a tree that closely matches the type of tree shown on the as-built landscape plans. Then, go to the Source tab and select Drape under the Draping options. Click Close & Refresh.
Figure 5
Figure 6
InfraWorks 360 will instantly bring in all the trees at the correct location. From this point, you can quickly and simply use the Styles palette to swap different types of trees at certain locations. In addition, you can change tree height to add more realism, as trees will most likely not be the same height.
With a simple AutoCAD file and circles representing proposed trees, designers and quickly and easily lay out trees within InfraWorks 360.
